My observation is that too many uses of metric in the USA, including that of
the health industry is very careless in differentiating between upper and
lower case when printing and using metric symbols. I suppose as Paul
Trusten has often emphasized to us, the failure to use upper and lower case
in medicine can be even more of a problem than in most other areas.
Norm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Elwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 14:47
Subject: [USMA:35372] blood tests
I had my annual physical last Monday, and received the blood test lab
printouts yesterday. It won't surprise anyone that they are all in metric:
g/dL, mg/dL, etc.
Unfortunately, the entire document is printed in upper-case text. So the
symbols really show up as:
MG/DL
MMOL/L
G/DL
The other problem is they list microliter as MCL.
I don't know if this is standard in the medical industry or just this
particular testing lab. It is unfortunate, in any case.
The company that did the testing is Quest Diagnostics. They say on thier
web site: "Quest Diagnostics is America's leading provider of diagnostic
testing services, performing laboratory tests for more than 500,000
patients each day."
Jim
Jim Elwell, CAMS
Electrical Engineer
Industrial manufacturing manager
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
www.qsicorp.com
